Earth Hour 's success story

Saturday March 23 was the date of this year's Earth Hour, a global event whereby supporters of global sustainability switch off their lights for an hour and pledge to support renewable energy.

One of the night's highlights was in Sydney, as the Opera House and Harbour Bridge switched their lights in support of the event.

"We’re proud to have supported Earth Hour since it started and we’re backing it up with the biggest building mounted solar installation in the country," said Sydney's lord mayor Clover Moore.

"We have installed solar panels on the Sydney Park Pavilion, the Paddington Town Hall and Erskineville Town Hall on the way to 5,500 solar panels on 30 major council buildings including pools, community centres, libraries and depots."

Sydney's solar panel installation initiative will produce a total electrical capacity of 1.25 MW with 2,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year.

This will amount to 12.5 per cent of total electricity used by the buildings taking part. It is calculated that this will reduce Sydney's carbon pollution by 2,250 tonnes yearly.

Australia wasn't the only country supporting Earth Hour -all around the world countries switched off their lights.

International highlights of Earth Hour included the Tokyo tower, the Burj Khalifa, Table Mountain, the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, the leaning tower of Pisa, and Times Square as just some of the locations to switch off their lights in support of the initiative.

"What is most important is the ever increasing extent to which Earth Hour’s supporters are participating in or taking actions themselves," said Earth Hour chief executive officer and co-founder, Andy Ridley.

"Now in its 7th year, Earth Hour is maturing from its origins as a consciousness raising event in one city, to a global movement that is not just calling for change but is engaging in it."

Events targeting youth involvement in the campaign were staged all around the world. There was a rock concert in Nepal, a reggae show in Jamaica, and even a rap concert in Libya to generate support for the event and what it represents.

The event was even supported from space, with astronauts tweeting their pictures of cities going dark for the event, and historically, a Russian astronaut sent a video message from space as the Red Square and the Kremlin turned off their lights of the first time in their support.